Critics of Enlightenment Rationalism Revisited
Editors:
Gene Callahan
and
Kenneth McIntyre
The aim of this project is to provide an overview of some
of the most important critics of Enlightenment rationalism.
The essays on each thinker
are intended not merely to offer a discussion of that thinker, but
also to place him or her in the context of this larger stream of
anti-rationalist thought.
Table of Contents
-
Introduction
Gene Callahan
and
Kenneth McIntyre
-
Conservatism and Social Criticism:
Pascal on Faith, Reason, and Politic
Tyler Chamberlain
-
Giambattista Vico and the Imaginative Sources of Political Division
Emily Finley,
Stanford University
-
"The Gods of the Hearth Exist for Us Still":
George Eliot's Critiques of Rationalism
Rob Wyllie,
Notre Dame
-
Projections Upon the Void:
Irving Babbitt’s Critique of Naturalism
Justin Garrison,
Roanoke College
-
Carl Schmitt's Exceptional Critique of Rationalism
Gulsen Seven
and
Aylin Özman
-
Max Weber and the Limits of Reason
Lucie Miryekta,
Catholic University of America
-
The Moral Personality of Mikhail Bulgakov
Jason Ferrell,
Concordia University
-
Nec Spe Nec Metu:
Philosophic Catharsis in Karl Löwith’s Meaning in History
Ryan Alexander McKinnell,
St. Francis Xavier University
-
Metaphor, Meaning, and Mind:
Knowledge and Imagination in Owen Barfield
Sarah Wilford,
Universidad de los Andes
-
J.R.R. Tolkien: Tales Against Domination
Nathanael Blake
-
Shedding the Shackles of Rationalism
Gene Callahan,
New York University
-
Beautiful Minds: Gregory Bateson on Humans, Animals and Ecological Systems
Charles Lowney,
Hollins University
-
Robert Nisbet:
Art, History, and the Anti-Rationalism of Sociological
Methodology
Luke C.Sheahan,
Duquesne University
-
Elizabeth Anscombe on Rationalism
Daniel Sportiello
,
University of Mary
-
A.C. Graham:
Aware Spontaneity (anti-rationalism)
vs Rationalism and Irrationalism
John Coats,
Connecticut College
-
Intention, Intellect, and Imagination:
Stuart Hampshire’s Pluralism
Kenneth McIntyre,
Sam Houston State University
-
Roger Scruton on Reason, Rationality
and the Reasonable
Ferenc Hörcher,
Research Institute of Politics and Government,
National University of Public Service
-
John Gray's Agon: Liberalism, Morality, Politics
Nathan Cockram
Reviewers' comments on Volume I:
-
"Callahan and McIntyre have brought together a distinguished
and cosmopolitan array of contributors who have produced a
lively and provocative collection of essays exploring and
analysing the modern phenomenon of Enlightenment rationalism
whose distinguished critics range from the historically
important Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Friedrich
Nietzsche, to our near contemporaries Hans-Georg Gadamer, Erii
Voegelin and Michael Oakeshott. The connecting and fascinating
thread that runs through the volume is a relentless critique of
a style of thinking that prioritises the pursuit of certainty,
and a blind belief in the powers of instrumental reason to
overcome all adversity."
David Boucher
Professor of Political Philosophy and International Relations
Cardiff University
-
"This is a remarkable and remarkably comprehensive collection
on thinkers who questioned enlightenment rationalism, both in
the nineteenth and twentieth century. The list is impressive:
Tocqueville, Kierkegaard, Burke, Nietzsche, Eliot, as well as
Oakeshott, Hayek, Alasdair MacIntyre, and a number of others
equally stellar, and equally deep and complex. The essays are
by accomplished scholars, and show that the opposition to
enlightenment rationalism was both diverse and strikingly
coherent, and a treasure trove for thinking beyond the
enlightenment. It will be especially valuable for those with
interests in one of these thinkers to see them in the context
of the larger fraternity to which they belong."
Stephen Turner
Distinguished University Professor
University of South Florida
-
"This volume could not have arrived at a better time. McIntyre
and Callahan have given us an excellent set of essays that
speaks directly to the fetishization of human reason. Each of
the thinkers examined reminds us of the fallibility of human
beings — a lesson we sorely need to revisit every generation or
so."
Richard Avramenko
Professor, Department of Political Science
Chair, Integrated Liberal Studies
Director, Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy
Editor-in-Chief, The Political Science Reviewer
University of Wisconsin-Madison
